


Brainwashing, Torture, and the World of Sburb by enturbulatedOccupation (ed. epinephrineElectrified)

by lucidChthonia (liquidCitrus)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Brainwashing, PTSD, Psychological Trauma, Replay Value AU, walkthrough
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-18
Updated: 2013-07-18
Packaged: 2017-12-20 13:46:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/887975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liquidCitrus/pseuds/lucidChthonia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>The fact is, if you put up a fight, you'll be dead. If you don't, if you let the Game mold and shape you down to your very bones, let it use you as conceptual canvas for its ideals of Replayer beauty, you will live for a hundred years. But, assuming that (like a normal person) you're feeling a creeping sense of disgust at the very notion, our goal here is to figure out what to give it, and how much of you you can safely carve out for yourself before breaking.</em>
</p><p>In which Sburb is reinterpreted as a very different kind of game. One that will break you, and if it cannot break you, kill you.</p><p>Written as a possible entry point to the <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/340777/">Replay Value AU</a>, and thus provides enough context to be read standalone. (Hopefully. Let me know if it doesn't.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brainwashing, Torture, and the World of Sburb by enturbulatedOccupation (ed. epinephrineElectrified)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Sburb Glitch FAQ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/340777) by [GodsGiftToGrinds](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GodsGiftToGrinds/pseuds/GodsGiftToGrinds). 



  
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"The threat of coercion usually weakens or destroys resistance more effectively than coercion itself." - The CIA's KUBARK manual, 1963

+----------------------------------------+  
| **About this Article** |  
+----------------------------------------+   
The person who originally wrote this article is none other than Myra LeJean, Waste of Mind, who needs no introduction for contemporary audiences. Nevertheless, context for the unfamiliar: she's a veteran who went MIA (presumed dead, with a note that most accept as her suicide note) in her twenty-seventh session, from an extremely unusual native world, who was critical to the formation of Sburb.org and the acceptance of the Cataclysm as an inevitable result of a Waste or a Grace's story arc (and, for that matter, the acceptance of Waste and Grace as titles in themselves). An accomplished Replayer, in every sense. And my mentor, to boot. But this is enough gushing.

This is not how I would write this FAQ. In fact, if I wrote this FAQ, it would have some very different connotations and attitudes embedded in it, because Myra never spent seven years in the Ring on a ship as a Heart player, and I never spent a presession on a world where I was forced to take up a weapon and fight a war because there was nothing else left for me to... oh. (Never mind.) But we can appreciate this FAQ for what it is, and perhaps even for what it tells us about her. (If you believe in literary analysis like the Sight kids do, of course.)

As far as I know, this is the last major essay of Myra's that has not yet been published. Myra never did finish it, though, as far as I can tell, she'd wanted to. I have edited and slightly expanded upon her early manuscripts and release it in the hope that it will prove as enlightening to others as it has to me. (Okay, that sounded pretentious. I mean of course that she had some interesting ideas and that I should not be the only one to know that they exist, so I'm shooting this FAQ out to all major Replayer networks.)

Update ts51.29: ...Somehow, this thing seems to make more sense when read in the grips of Knight Syndrome. I'm not entirely sure why. Probably the haze of existential pessimism.

Further update ts51.54: Polished and published. Let me know if anything seems off and I'll fix it.

+----------------------------------------+  
| **Background Information** |  
+----------------------------------------+  
The Korean War was not a particularly great war to be in, considering it had 1) Communists and 2) guns in it. (Then again, no wars are great wars to be in. If only because a lot of them had Communists. And let's not even talk about the guns.) It was also, according to a man called Albert Biderman, not a great war to be captured in. Specifically, in September 1957, he published a paper under the title of "Communist attempts to elicit false confessions from Air Force prisoners of war", wherein he described Communist attempts to elicit false confessions from Air Force prisoners of war (then again, what else could he have published under that name? Cupcake recipes?), and wherein said false confessions were explained by the techniques used on them. (Ed.: I have left out some graphic descriptions of _how_ this could be achieved. They are easily enough available elsewhere, and are irrelevant to the topic.)

These techniques have been used and exploited by autocratic governments throughout Paradox Space, whether your universe actually had that particular publication or not. They have been used by religions and cults. They have also been used by individual people. Not because they are effective at getting people to confess - may I point out that the title of the article in question specifies that they are "false confessions"? - but because they are good at establishing and maintaining a startling degree of control over people and their actions and choices. Free will? That last precious sacred cow of the novice Mind player? Pffffhah. Not everyone is bulletproof, hermanita.

What does this have to do with Sburb? Everything.

Let's start with ARC.

== The Accumulated Roleplay Coefficient ==  
Congratulations, you're a Hero of Skaia. (Or, if you're reading this, you really should be, unless something has gone horribly wrong, in which case I hope you're not too fucked.) Which means that you have a role that you're supposed to live up to, sooner or later. This is accomplished by something that some people call the Knife's Edge, after the fact that if you slip you'll fall, or cut yourself, or both. I prefer to call it like I see it: a carrot, and a stick.

The carrot: If you act like an X of Y you get magical bullshit powers. Some of them you will probably actually want to have because they are genuinely useful (like psybuffs and scrying). Some of them are useless (like that Life ability that kicks up the growth of your hair, which I have heard used on purpose exactly once, and that was for the purpose of taking said hair through the Door and then selling it on eBay pregame for money). It's random, but it's at least occasionally attractive. Then again, the protag in Aladdin pointed out that "it's barbaric, but hey, it's home." (Stockholm syndrome is left as an exercise to the reader.)

The stick: If you don't act like an X of Y you don't get magical bullshit powers and as a result will be dead eventually. Maybe not immediately - someone else can save your pasty nerd ass (ahem), and you can level up without acting like your Role by killing things in a manner that strikes your fancy, although that will likely eventually prove inadequate - but eventually you simply won't be leveled enough to keep up with basic duties of an Sburb player. Like "not being dead".

Now let's back up and do some grave-robbing and see what the old dead white guy by the name of Biderman has to say on the matter. Mostly because it turns out he has a lot.

== The Chart of Coercion ==  
The Chart of Coercion is a table in Biderman's paper. It looks something like this:

+=================+========================================+=========================================================+  
| **Techniques** | **Effects** | **Variants** |  
+=================+========================================+=========================================================+  
| _Isolation_ |  > Deprives victim of social support | Complete solitary confinement. Complete isolation. |  
| | > Makes victim dependent upon captor | Semi-isolation. Group isolation. |  
+-----------------+----------------------------------------+---------------------------------------------------------+  
| _Monopolization_ |  > Fixes attention upon immediate | Physical isolation. Darkness or bright light. Barren |  
| _of perception_ | predicament | environment. Restricted movement. Monotonous food. |  
| | > Fosters introspection | |  
+-----------------+----------------------------------------+---------------------------------------------------------+  
| _Induced_ |  > Weakens mental/physical ability to | Semi-starvation. Exposure. Exploitation of wounds. |  
| _debilitation/_ | resist | Induced illness. Sleep deprivation. Prolonged |  
| _exhaustion_ |  > Keeps one in a state of confusion | constraint. Prolonged interrogation. Over-exertion. |  
+-----------------+----------------------------------------+---------------------------------------------------------+  
| _Threats_ |  > Cultivates anxiety and despair | Threats of death. Threats of non-return. Threats of |  
| | | endless interrogation and isolation. Threats against |  
| | | family. Vague threats. Mysterious changes of treatment. |  
+-----------------+----------------------------------------+---------------------------------------------------------+  
| _Occasional_ |  > Hinders adjustment to deprivation | Favors. Fluctuations of interrogator's attitudes. |  
| _indulgences_ |  > Provides positive motivation for | Promises. Rewards for partial compliance. |  
| | compliance | |  
+-----------------+----------------------------------------+---------------------------------------------------------+  
| _Demonstrations_ |  > Suggests futility of resistance | Confrontation. Pretending cooperation taken for |  
| _of omnipotence*_ | | granted. Demonstrating complete control over victim's |  
| _and omniscience_ | | fate. |  
+-----------------+----------------------------------------+---------------------------------------------------------+  
| _Degradation_ |  > Makes resistance look less | Personal hygiene prevented. Filthy/infested surrounds. |  
| | attractive than capitulation | Demeaning punishments. Insults. Taunts. Denial of |  
| | > Reduces one to animal-level concerns | privacy. |  
+-----------------+----------------------------------------+---------------------------------------------------------+  
| _Enforcing_ |  > Develops habit of compliance | Forced writing. Enforcement of minute rules. |  
| _trivial demands_ | | |  
+-----------------+----------------------------------------+---------------------------------------------------------+

* I have removed the quotation marks around "omnipotence" and "omniscience" from the original. Mostly because, in this case, they are literally true. This does not significantly change their importance in the psychological environment.

With some minor adjustments, these principles can be stretched to fit Sburb. For example, the practice of physical transportation to the Medium, with even dreams happening within an Sburb context, is a monopolization of perception beyond the wildest dreams of the architects of the Soviet gulag, and the further total extermination of anyone who is not a destined Player - with all your social contacts now carapaces and consorts who genuinely believe you are the Hero of Skaia and act surprised and offended when you transgress your role - is a brutally effective method of social isolation.

== Mental Pressure-Washing ==  
The core principles of brainwashing have not significantly changed over time, due to the fact that they rely on the use of core psychological features of people that do not significantly change over time. Furthermore, they can be replicated at any scale, in an environment of any size, using any level of technology. Domestic abuse? Coerced prostitution? Prison systems? Nursing homes? Does any of this begin to sound familiar? It's all the same shit, just different shovels.

Brainwashing is one thing, and one thing only: getting you to believe that you should do what they say or they will kill you. All else is nuance. Of course, as they also say, the devil is in the details (which makes you wonder why they decided that God is in the gaps, as if godliness is a kind of spackle that can be used to conceal evil until Science chips it away).

Ideally, the stick eventually disappears from brainwashing - the goal is, after all, to mold you, not kill you - and you will know that you are to be led around by the carrot exclusively, with small reinforcements to keep your training fresh. However, the Game keeps changing the goals with every new session - bringing role conditioning to an abrupt end and forcing you to learn a totally different set of behaviors - meaning that we never quite get good enough at this thing to be able to go without punishment. So it's still about getting you to believe that you should do what they say or they will kill you after all.

== Psychological Effects ==  
Obviously, being subject to brainwashing is unpleasant. More specifically (and much more observably), it has a constellation of psychological effects, which should slowly unwind themselves with time and social support (which would be more possible if we ever stopped playing this game). The Game also has a disturbing but thankfully sporadic tendency to aggravate and reinforce prior damage - it takes far less effort on the brainwasher's part to poke you where it hurts, if such places can be found, than to create a new psychic wound every time - and this only makes time and support more urgent to get.

Psychological effects include any or all of the following: flashbacks and nightmares, exaggerated startle, emotional disturbances (anxiety, depression, and/or anger), avoidance or "shutting down" over reminders, distortions in social relationships, and a variety of cognitive disturbances about what could have been done or where to place blame.

From the inside, it's more like this: You have to sit with your back to an interior wall or you'll be looking over your shoulder all night. You struggle to give fucks, even the pickled fucks from a jar that are standard polite sympathy. You find yourself trailing off while you're supposed to be doing something, realizing you've fallen into the inside of your own head again. You cut people off that you've known for years over two wrong sentences (sentences that make you doubt that you ever knew who they were, or that you should ever have told them anything - but nevertheless, you simply can't risk giving them any more chances. Or any chances.) You know you shouldn't hate everything, but you do and you can't stop.

A more detailed treatment of these psychological effects is, unfortunately, beyond the scope of this essay.

+----------------------------------------+  
| **Observed Compliance Techniques** |  
+----------------------------------------+  
This list/glossary is not complete. It will probably never be. Attempting to list every conceivable compliance technique known to exist in the Game is likely futile, as the Game has been known to change and, with it, pretty much every hope we've ever had. But knowledge is leverage. It is not power - research locked up in someone's slowly decaying skull is useless - but for any given expenditure of effort, picking battles will get you further than charging into brick walls with your eyes screwed shut. Even if charging into brick walls is satisfying to you. (Then again, if it makes you happy...)

== ARC ==   
[Also known as: Accumulated Roleplay Coefficient, Carrot and Stick Classic]  
[tl;dr: Act like an X of Y, and get bullshit magical powers.]

The meat and potatoes of Sburb's trauma factory, ARC is that thing where you get bullshit magical powers if you act sufficiently like your title to please our various swirly-shaped overlords. The difficulty of the game just so happens to slowly increase such that if you don't stick to your bullshit magical powers role carefully enough, the difficulty of simple Underling encounters will eventually prove sufficient to kill you. On the plus side, if you're willing to spoiler yourself on what an X of Y is as soon as you know your title, you can get enough of a head start acting like an X of Y in the early game to beat out the game's behavioral shaping curve and gain some breathing room. It'll just ego-deplete you like a motherfucker, and never be quite enough breathing room to allow you to do what you actually wanted to do, besides.

== Carapaces ==   
[Also known as: The Dreaming, chess pieces, Prospitians, Dersians, battlefield mutant things, Queens, Kings, etc.]  
[tl;dr: They're self-important little shits having a fake war that doesn't actually matter in the scheme of things.]

The difference between a white chess piece and a black chess piece is the color impregnated into their chitinous shell. That and a dab of mental conditioning. As a result, the useless war they happen to be engaged in every single fucking session bears substantial and very suspicious similarity to a lot of actual human wars that happened because of a bunch of racial in-groups acting like assholes. It's almost like Sburb wanted to do the social commentary thing, and failed spectacularly at it, because basically nobody in Replayerdom appears to actually take the "hey maybe we shouldn't fight about meaningless details about ourselves" message seriously.

The main reasons they're important here is because they have these things called prophecies, and they curate them, and they appear to be able to maintain formidable levels of doublethink about the purpose of their existence being to fight a useless war even as they explain how you're going to make a name for yourself avenging the fall of Prospit. In fact, when you tell them they are fighting a completely useless war, that one side is destined to lose for Plot reasons, and that you Players are going to avenge the loss through a set of highly scripted and dramatic battle sequences for no good reason, they will stare at you like you've suddenly grown an extra head and then change the subject. Like, to how you're destined to do fucking awesome things on the battlefield and that they're very happy to rally behind you, if you'd just agree to it (i.e. and just sign on the imaginary dotted line, please). Very effective at pressuring you into doing things using classic sales techniques, most notably door-in-the-face. This being said, you can largely ignore the ideological content of the dream moon quests even while doing them, as your dreamself is suggestible but usually maintains a weak enough connection to your realself that you can dismiss most of it as dream logic.

== Consorts ==   
[Also known as: a variety of name puns starting at "nakodile" and becoming steadily worse, worst fucking escort quests ever]  
[tl;dr: They're helpless, they depend on you for everything, and they will love you forever whether you like it or not.]

Consorts are codependent, neotenous (big-headed, doe-eyed, and designed to hit all your "oh my god cute baby must take care of it" instincts) things whose purpose in existence is to sit on your heartstrings to prevent you from walking away. Because you _will_ want to walk away, that's not a question. But when you stop questing, the Denizen will burn a few dozen of them out of their homes and they will send a messenger across half the planet with burn scars and bleeding feet to try to petition you to go back and save them (as if they've never heard of the concept of a messenger relay, Pony Express-style). Or a baby consort will die in your arms of the plague and you'll be expected to swear vengeance at the memorial service because the parents are asking you to please have pity on them, they're obviously important to the community and so, so grief-stricken. Consorts have attempted to tell me that my Guardian would expect no less of me (which was hilarious when they got the gender of the Guardian in question wrong, because they were talking about the Guardian of my replayee). Consorts have invoked the memory of dead coplayers that I never told them about because they were from previous sessions. Consorts have told me flat-out that I was only a good person if I helped them. Frankly, I have no idea why anyone would actually want to put this shit in a game. Unfortunately, sanity has never been a consideration in the design of Sburb.

== Denizens ==   
[Also known as: "that fucker"]  
[tl;dr: They will piss you off and get a rise out of you, and then proceed to ingratiate themselves with you, and then force you to kill them. And this is a game for young teenagers?]

Oddly, the Denizen is probably the best training for how to not get trolled that I've seen, but the only reason it's the best training is because it has omnipotence access to your brain and thus knows exactly how to mash all your buttons and play the Tetris theme with their bleeps and bloops until you give up trying to get angry. Which is generally because, by that point, you're utterly exhausted. This will keep happening for several weeks, until you go straight to "utterly exhausted" instead of getting angry at all. At this point, you will realize that, against all better judgement on your part (...against all judgement on your part, period), you have grown fond of this entire rigamarole. Which, naturally, is the part where they lie down and ask you to kill them. Just in case the Game isn't traumatic enough, you are then expected to deal with the resulting complicated grief on your own time without any significant further help. If it's any consolation, it happened to everyone else, too. But I find that this knowledge only makes it worse, not better.

== Doom (timeline/nonplayer) ==   
[Also known as: Splinter-selves, Dooming mechanic]  
[tl;dr: People that aren't supposed to happen die.]

The Game has a very simple and very effective way of ensuring that only the people who are supposed to play the Game actually make it through the Medium. It is called the nonplayer doom mechanic. It causes all nonplayers to die if you bring them into the Game. Nonplayer Doom is probably the most effective method of social isolation in the Game, the Doorscatter of course not included in this figure. If you can bring nobody with you, and you can bring very little "stuff" with you that is not inside your head, where can you get a sense of connection from?

The Game also has a very simple and very effective way of ensuring that only one timeline, out of all the multitudinous timelines that theoretically may or may not exist, actually continues furthest, and is the "proper" timeline. It is called the timeline doom mechanic. It causes everyone in a splinter timeline to become Doomed and then die. Even if they somehow find a way back to the main timeline.

I have seen exactly one instance in which Doom was subverted without a Deal. It was a Cataclysm. Don't count on it happening to you. But if you bring someone into the Game, anyway, despite knowing full well they're going to die? You're going to need to figure out how to say goodbye to them. Do it now; putting it off will not end well.

(Ed.: Actually, one of my early coplayers carted around a battered and duct-taped-together book of poetry through a double-digit number of sessions, and said that he'd grown to understand every word intimately in a hundred different ways, and this kept him from going insane. So there have always been workarounds, if not perfect ones. Replayer networks cut this Gordian knot, however, by allowing persistent social connection, and this is much of why they are so valuable.)

== Mental Effects ==   
[Also known as: Mental disorders, psybuffs, Tactician's Folly, Knight Syndrome, several BTs...]  
[tl;dr: The Game /can/ reach in and mess with your head whenever it damn well pleases. However, it usually uses these powers to make you doubt your basic competence.]

This is the part where I flatly wonder who the fuck wrote this game - not because of its glitches, but because this is a startling example of effectiveness blended with profound ignorance of what the game function could be used for. It would have been easier by far to use whatever mechanism makes psybuffs and BTs work, and use that to make us into X of Y and have done with it that way. Of course, that objection does not apply if we're some sort of weird Eastern European reality TV show done inside a simulation, with the Horrorterrors actually native Polish speakers. But I digress.

What most of the mental effects of the game do to you is to make you doubt your basic competence. Things happen, out of your control but with your presumed consent to go along with them - for you _remember_ making that choice, you _remember_ being certain things happened differently - and there are results, and they are horrifying. And then you stare at what-hath-Sburb-wrought, and you're absolutely certain simultaneously that a) it is your fault and that b) your choices are meaningless. I cannot convince you it isn't your fault; I have my own regrets. I can tell you that whatever happens, the Game may well be using it to tell you that you are helpless before its power, and that you should prostrate yourself to it. So be careful what you attribute to yourself and your free will.

== Sprites ==   
[Also known as: Laser Ghosts, player-pendant dispensers]  
[tl;dr: Overpowered tutorial-area mentor who dies.]

In case it wasn't clear from the previous entries that the developers of Sburb apparently want everyone who plays this game to have major attachment issues, let me just state this for the record: from the Game's design, it is clear that nobody in Sburb is supposed to be able to trust that karma will come around and reward good behavior in the end, or that they possess efficacy or agency, or that the future is stable enough to plan for, or that any relationships that are forged will not be torn away by death or eternal separation. Whether these statements are objectively true or false is irrelevant; human psychology requires these kinds of beliefs to exist to prevent total breakdown. (Ed.: She knew as well as anyone that you can't just make yourself believe something because you want to. I should have seen this. Unfortunately, now I can do nothing about it.)

With this being said, the Sprite is supposed to attempt to assist you in surviving the early game, and then disappear, but only *after* it has managed to worm its way into your affections. Which is also accomplished via some questionable Game raw emotion manipulation that may or may not be a formal psybuff. Some care is required here to minimize the damage of the resulting separation, but consider it training for the later Denizen mourning period.

== Prophecy ==   
[Also known as: Predestination]  
[tl;dr: Dick move #32914: "Your coplayer is going to die. And you can't do anything about it."]

So it's one thing to know the Game's omnipotent, and that there are things in it that have omniscience (hello, Denizens). It is another entirely to walk into the Royal Library, and realize that the Game has these highly detailed predictions of what kind of actions will happen. And a further shock to realize that they all come true. Sometimes you find out that an attempt to subvert a prophecy results in its fulfillment; this is a classic trope that Sburb cannot help but take advantage of. This tends to do a very good job of convincing you that anything you do will not matter, so you may as well just go along with the Game's designs for you. Or rage against the heavens and die (someone did that in one of my sessions once; it ended... spectacularly). It may, however, be helpful to read the marvelous research documents of immediateThorium, about the Imperatives and Priorities theory of prophecy fulfillment, to gain some insight into how much flexibility actually exists in the Game's prophecy system. It is probably more than you think.

+----------------------------------------+  
| **Your Options** |  
+----------------------------------------+  
The fact is, if you put up a fight, you'll be dead. If you don't, if you let the Game mold and shape you down to your very bones, let it use you as conceptual canvas for its ideals of Replayer beauty, you will live for a hundred years. But, assuming that (like a normal person) you're feeling a creeping sense of disgust at the very notion, our goal here is to figure out what to give it, and how much of you you can safely carve out for yourself before breaking. And whether you'll hold firm to your ideals and die, or let the Game break that which you treasure, casually, and dust the pieces onto the floor.

That's going to happen. You're going to be forced to choose between life and principle. You will hate yourself if you choose life. But you'll be dead if you choose principle. You are already making this choice, by inches, with everything you do, or say, or do not say. (And, lest some of you shirk responsibility by deferring to Lady Luck, they say also that fortune favors the bold.)

Therein lies the difficulty.

== The Principle Of The Thing ==  
So, the question goes: how do you keep yourself together as you begin the slow downward spiral towards losing everything you care about? The answer is, admittedly, painfully stereotypical and could easily get me dismissed as "just another Mind player": you figure out how to get, and keep, some semblance of agency. Knowing that you can keep control of something (even if it is insignificant in the scheme of things), and that Sburb will be unable to take these choices away from you, is an electrifying sensation that will go a very long way towards keeping you sane and functioning. (I am not certain if this is true for other people, or for other aspects, but in the event that this fails to be a general statement, it will at least still be true for other Mind players. Need to interview different Native aspects, possibly circulate beta copies.)

I've enclosed some suggestions to that effect.

== The Dead Option ==  
All right. If you really think you cannot live without your principles, you can go ahead and stick to them, and see how far it takes you. If you die with your personality intact, I will respect you for standing until the end. But I cannot go with you. That first decision to break with yourself for the sake of survival is irreversible.

== The Numerical Option ==  
One way to feel like you have a life that isn't Sburb is to calculate how much effort you have to put into playing in order to not die, and then expend only exactly that amount of effort. Ideally, you will also expend just enough extra effort to give you a cushion, so that one event will not set you back unduly, or so that if catastrophe strikes you will not be forced into an agonizing choice between your grief response and your life. There are tables and calculators and mnemonic strategies on Pits designed for the purpose of measuring ARC and effectiveness and roleplaying; you may choose which ones you like. Just be careful you don't fall.

== The Perpendicular Option ==  
In your downtime, take up a hobby. Get very good at the hobby. Show it off to anyone who will appreciate it. It's all right, but not necessary and sometimes counterproductive, if this turns out to be a hobby with occasional practical uses. It's a way to define yourself that is unrelated to the Game, and cannot be affected by what the Game does with you. A lot of people have gotten far better at cooking than the Game requires, for this exact reason.

== The Usefulness Option ==  
You may also have your hobby be "knowledge about how to play Sburb", or knowledge that you need in order to play Sburb optimally (i.e. musical instrument, dance-strifing, fighting tactics). This is, of course, more useful than an unrelated hobby. However, it poses the danger that, should your knowledge prove insufficient to solve a problem - or save someone - that is an inroad the Game has to your identity and sense of competence that it would not have had otherwise. I have seen people blame themselves for such events, and subsequently waste away to nothing - or get themselves killed trying to solve problems they were insufficiently informed to solve themselves.

+----------------------------------------+  
| **Coda (by epinephrineElectrified)** |  
+----------------------------------------+   
Seeing Sburb as a brainwashing system is one of those life-changing alterations in your Theory of Everything that makes you realize that previously inexplicable events turn out to be connected in a way that you've never realized was possible. Of _course_ the Game is trying to isolate you so that you are more easily persuaded. It makes an incredible amount of sense that BTs exist to weaken you and make you doubt your efficacy. This connection also means that the Replayer community can apply the substantial literature on psychological trauma to attempting to explain the Replayer experience, which is immediately useful to fellow Mind players who are trying to help people right now.

But, bringing this back to the metaphysical realm, I want you to know that you are not alone. Yes, _you_. People have gone through what you are going through right now. There are many people who want you to know that this life is survivable, that this is how you survive it, that this is how you live - and, I daresay, perhaps even _thrive_ in it - and I consider myself one of them. Epic E-Peen may be a persona that Gives No Fucks, but I, the person, do care, and will help people who need help as much as is possible. (Possibly more than is wise, for me. If I could help more people without burning out I'd do that in a heartbeat.)

Thirteen sessions ago I was pointed to an imageboard running on badly patched software that required a third-party linearity connection to use, and it kept me from spiralling off into the darkness. Since then I have made a fool of myself, and screamed and cried, and lost many things that were important to me, and been forced by the Game to assume a role that is not my native for seven full years in the Ring. But I have always had people before and behind me as I have slipped and slid upwards and downwards and covered myself in glitter in the process, and it would only be fair to extend the same to you.

So this is not the end of the story. I hope. Certainly it's the end of Myra's, spun out after her death because I've got nothing of hers left to release. But if ever you need anything? Please tell someone. There is an us. We will help you.

May the Soul preserve your essence, and may the Path unfold a thousand-fold before you.

== Further Reading ==   
In no particular order, a small collection of FAQs, essays, and other resources that are related to this topic. (Though by and large, I had to hunt for these, because the application of trauma theory to Sburb is not yet an obvious or popular topic.)

"Whose Blame Is It Anyway?" by anthemResistance  
"Observations" by duodecimalDelineation  
"There Are No Theists In Sburb: Or, Why Nothing Is Sacred" by quantumEntanglement  
"But Do We Have Free Won't?" by ringlessOrdinateur  
"Research Documents on the Prophecy System" by immediateThorium  
"Case Study" and "Never Been Better" by cogitativeMistake  
"Identity And Sburb Roles" by indifferentBem  
"Learned Helplessness Or Fear?" by fatiguedFractal  
"Why I Tell You To Go On" by mellifluousSapwood

**Author's Note:**

> This FAQ was inspired by the traumatic undertones I kept thinking I was projecting onto the [Sburb Glitch FAQ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/340777/) before realizing I wasn't the only one who saw them, a friend who saw substantial amounts of combat in Iraq, and another friend (using an increasingly loose definition of the word "friend") that I usually call "brain problems".
> 
> Actual sources/resources (in no particular order):
> 
> [Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (NIMH)](http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-ptsd/index.shtml)  
> [Frequently Asked Questions about PTSD (National Center for PTSD)](http://www.ptsd.va.gov/public/pages/faq-about-ptsd.asp)  
> [Moral Injury: When Soldiers Betray Their Sense Of Right And Wrong (WBUR Boston)](http://www.wbur.org/2013/06/21/moral-injury-illustration)  
> [What PTSD Is (Myke Cole)](http://mykecole.com/blog/2013/03/what-ptsd-is)  
>  _Trauma and Recovery_ by Judith Herman  
>  _On Killing_ by Dave Grossman  
>  _What It Is Like To Go To War_ by Karl Marlantes  
>  _Split_ by Swati Avasthi  
>  _Empire of Trauma_ by Didier Fassin, Richard Rechtman, Rachel Gomme, et al.  
>  _The Handmaid's Tale_ by Margaret Atwood  
> ...and in case it's ever needed: [IMalive, an online crisis hotline](https://www.imalive.org/)


End file.
